Ties That Bind
by ariabellewrites
Summary: Felicity had done a lot of things for Oliver in the time that she had known him, except this time she was the one who needed something from him, and she just wasn't sure if she would ever manage to force the request out of her mouth.


Felicity glanced away from her computer to look at Oliver for what felt like the millionth time in the past two hours. He had actually shown up at the office for once, and was catching up on paper work. He had that concentrated look on his face that he had whenever he did anything, and was holding his pen with a loose grip as he scribbled across the page.

She both loathed and appreciated the glass wall that separated them.

She forced herself to look back at her own work, and forced her fingers to fly across the keyboard like they always did, though she wasn't putting much thought into the work, after spending all those nights in the foundry, her actual job almost seemed pointless.

It wasn't that Felicity didn't love her job, because she did, but some days – like this one, her work seemed so tedious in comparison to the things they needed to get done in the foundry, to the unanswered questions they still needed to find answers to.

And on top of that, Felicity had her own fair share of problems, including ones that were going to become big problems if she didn't find the courage somewhere inside of her to get off her ass and ask Oliver for a favor.

It couldn't be that hard, right? It's not like he would refuse her. Except there was the tiny seed of fear inside of her that was growing with each passing minute that was saying he would refuse her, he would even make fun of her for asking him.

She knew they were friends, at this point they had to be friends, and Felicity wasn't even scared to stand up to him and yell at him, but asking him for something was a whole new territory that they hadn't even so much as touched upon, and she wasn't sure if she could cross it.

And more than that, what Felicity needed from Oliver was something she had promised herself she would never ask him for, it was something she didn't need him ever associating their friendship with, and she wasn't sure if she was going to damage their friendship to the point where it was irreversible if she asked him this.

Felicity never would have even thought of it if she had exhausted all her other options, but she had done everything she could have thought of – short of illegal activity, which was something she drew the line at when it didn't involve benefitting the city – she had sold everything she could spare, had gotten another job bussing tables – something she had somehow managed to keep from Oliver and Diggle – and still couldn't come up with the money she needed.

And now Felicity was out of time, she needed money, and she needed it soon.

And then suddenly she really noticed how easily Oliver brushed off anything that involved money, he handed her his credit card without a second thought to pay for Arrow necessities, and bought expensive jewelry to draw out bad guys, and the seed had been planted.

Except it was a dangerous seed, and it had been driving her insane for the past month.

She _couldn't _ask him for money. She _wouldn't _ask him for money.

That had to violate the silent boundaries of their friendship in every possible way.

Except she wasn't asking it for her, she didn't even want it, but she felt a sense of daughterly duty to help her mother when she couldn't help herself, which would make this situation no different from most situations if it wasn't for the fact that even Felicity couldn't do this on her own.

Whoever said money couldn't buy happiness was the dumbest asshole she had ever heard of.

"Felicity!"

"Huh?" Felicity jumped as Oliver raised his voice, his lips forming the sounds of her name, "Oliver, you're standing right in front of me, you didn't need to be so loud."

"Yes I did," He said with a small smile playing at his lips, "I called your name like six times, where were you?"

"Right here."

"I meant your head."

"Oh right, in the clouds. You know I never really got that expression, the whole head in the clouds thing? Like yes obviously it's a metaphor for being distracted or not with it or whatever, but it's just weird, if your head is in the clouds, where is the rest of your body? Is it just like a mental beheading or something?"

"Felicity is something wrong?"

Felicity frowned, how had he gotten that from her head in the clouds spiel?

"I'm fine, what do you need?" She asked quickly.

"You know what?" Oliver said slowly as he grabbed a pen from Felicity's cup holder, "Never mind, why don't you go home? It's late."

"I'm fine, Oliver." She repeated slightly irritated. It wasn't his fault, it was her own, it just bothered her that all she had been thinking about was asking Oliver for money, and now he was being sweet, and observant, and so un-Oliver, that she could literally feel the guilt washing over her in droves at just the thought of what she wanted to ask him, "What do you need?"

"Nothing, actually, I think I'm going to head home. Get your things I'll walk you to your car."

"Wait are we going home or _going home_?" Felicity mentally face-palmed, "I didn't mean it like that, obviously we aren't going home together to, you know, we're friends, really good friends, friends who can ask each other for favors without feeling like we're a terrorist, and so obviously we wouldn't be going home together, not like that, I mean like are we going to our homes – as in separately, or are we going to Verdant, and I'm going to stop in three, two, one."

"Felicity," Oliver said in that same slow tone that he used when he was trying to figure her out but he was treading carefully, "Do you need a favor?"

"No," Felicity said raising her eyebrows pretending to be taken aback, "What would make you think I need a favor for? I'm not a gold-digger."

Felicity mentally slapped herself a million times over, it wasn't a huge secret that Felicity could in fact keep a secret, contrary to popular belief she did in fact have a filter, or at least she had a filter around everyone other than Oliver Queen.

"I'm going to ask you something," Oliver began.

"No, no, no," Felicity cut him off shaking her head, "Let's just go home, you to your mansion, and me to my tiny little shoebox apartment."

"How much money do you need?"

Felicity blinked at Oliver for a few moments, she had been agonizing over how to approach this subject for weeks now, and she was constantly telling herself not to do it, so how _dare _Oliver Queen just go ahead and ask her how much money she needed like she was some charity case that he was writing a check out to.

"_Excuse me?"_

"How much money do you need?" He repeated like she was a child.

"Oliver Queen, you are the most tactless person I have ever met in my entire life!" Felicity cried jabbing his chest with her pointer finger with each and every word she spoke, trying not to get distracted by how hard his chest was underneath her finger.

"Well it's not like you were ever going to get around to asking me, Felicity! I was starting to think I was going to have to have Walter anonymously drop a shitload of money into your bank account." Oliver rolled his eyes in his oh so tactful manner of defending his words.

"Wait a second," Felicity waved her hands in the air like she had a habit of doing when she was mad, "How did you know I needed money?"

Oliver was silent for a moment as he regarded her with a sad look, at least she was choosing to believe it was a sad look and not a look of pity, because if it was a look of pity then Felicity was going to have to kick his ass, and she didn't see that particular fight going so well for her.

"Dig," He said in a significantly quieter tone, "Saw you at Big Belly Burger a couple of days ago, maybe a week ago."

Felicity sighed as she crossed her arms over her chest, she had thought Big Belly Burger was the perfect place to get a job. They were always hiring, not to mention it would be easy to keep the boys out of it, if she kept up a constant supply of burgers.

If she was constantly delivering them, there would be no need for them to go the burger joint. Evidently, her logic had been very, very wrong.

"He went to see Carly, they're working on being friends or something, for his nephew's sake."

Shit, of course, somehow for all her brains and computer power, Felicity had forgotten that there would be a possibility that Dig would go to Big Belly Burger not for burgers but to in fact meet Carly, their short-lived relationship seemed so long ago in the whole grand scheme of things.

"I was going to tell you," She said finally tucking her hair behind her ear, for a brief moment she was grateful that she made a point to occasionally put her hair down these days, it gave her something to distract herself with, "You know eventually."

"About the job?" Oliver asked walking around her desk as she sat back down in her chest, and pulling himself up to sit on it, "Or about your mom?"

She didn't know how he knew, or where he had found out from, but what Felicity did know was that she wasn't okay with him knowing, not at all. Because if he knew, that meant Diggle knew, and if Diggle knew, that meant Sara knew, which meant Roy knew, and so on and so forth, and Felicity couldn't have anyone knowing about her mom.

Felicity was the one who wasn't supposed to have baggage, she was the one who was supposed to keep her dirty laundry out of the foundry, she was supposed to keep things light, she was supposed to be the one who helped the rest of them.

She wasn't the one who was supposed to need the help.

"You had no right," She said quietly blinking back her tears, "No right, to look into my mother."

"We weren't Felicity," Oliver said gently, "Not at first anyway, you weren't picking up your phone, and we were looking into a lead for Helena at a club in Vegas, the club where your mother works."

"I don't care," Felicity whispered turning away from him as her tears started to fall, "You still had no right."

"No we didn't," Oliver agreed placing a hand on her shoulder that she couldn't find in herself to brush off, "Except forgetting the fact that you never talk about your family, you hadn't been in the foundry much, we didn't know where you were half the time, and you constantly look like your dead on your feet. You were exhausted Felicity, mentally, and physically, and we wanted to know why."

She tried to find a suitable answer to that but she couldn't, partly because she knew she would've done the same if it was Oliver or Dig, but mostly because that was the most she had ever heard Oliver say at one time that didn't revolve around saving the city.

"Your mom is 50,000 dollars in debt," Oliver said quietly, "And while I'm not one to talk about good mothers, you don't seem to like yours very much, so why are you so hell bent on helping her?"

"Despite the fact that's she my mom, and I have to love her?" Felicity laughed with no humor, "She's in debt with bad people, Oliver, like the Arrow should deal with them kind of bad people, and she's about to get kicked out of her apartment. And if she gets kicked out of her apartment, the only place she has to go is here."

"And you don't want her here," Oliver said coming to the terrible truth of the matter.

"I love my mom," Felicity repeated as she tried to find the words that encompassed the complexity of her relationship with the woman, "But I can't have her living with me Oliver, I can't have her in Starling City, I can't, I just can't."

"Hey, okay," Oliver said in that soothing tone that he usually only reserved for Thea, as he pulled her gently into his chest, as her tears finally turned into actual crying, "We'll figure it out okay, we'll send her the money, or the Arrow can branch out in Vegas, whatever, we will figure it out."

"Oliver," She said between her sobs, "I don't want your money, I don't want anything from you. I just don't want my mother with me, and I don't want here alone, and I don't know what to do."

"Felicity," Oliver said pulling away only slightly so he could cup her face and look at her seriously, "Do you want to know what I thought every time I came to you before you knew I was the Arrow?"

"What?"

"Every time I used to think to myself, this is the last time, I don't ever want to see Felicity Smoak again."

"What?" She asked confused now, and slightly hurt.

"I always knew that somehow, someway, that you were never going to be able to just help me without getting caught up in all of this, without-"

"Oliver this is different-"

"Just let me finish, Felicity," He cut her off just as she had cut him off, "Do you know why most of the time we don't like being with our family? It's because if they're with us too long, they'll get to know who we are, and it's scary not knowing your family enough to know if they'll accept you for who you are."

Felicity sniffed as Oliver wiped at her tears, "My mom can't come here, she wouldn't get it, she wouldn't get me."

"Do you remember how you just told me we were friends, and friends could ask other friends for favors?"

Felicity nodded in his hands.

"We aren't friends, Felicity," He said seriously, "We are family, and family doesn't ask each other favors, family always takes care of each other, and doesn't think of it as anything else."

"And we're family," She whispered quietly.

Oliver leaned forward just slightly and planted his lips on her forehead for a long moment causing her to close her eyes.

"And we're family," He repeated, "By the way, I already sent your mother the 25,000 that you couldn't make, oh, and I quit your job for you at Big Belly Burger."

"You did _what_?"

"Queen Consolidated doesn't share their employees," Oliver said grabbing her coat and helping her slide it on, "And Team Arrow doesn't like it when their resident IT girl constantly pays for their food."

"I thought we weren't calling ourselves Team Arrow?"

"We aren't. Now come on Felicity, let me take you home, and I do mean the foundry."


End file.
